It certainly comes as no surprise, then, that despite an ongoing battle with Stage IV throat cancer, Howell assistant coach Ken Richards is exactly where he promised in January that he would be come August, out on the football field each and every day with his players, doing what he loves to do most.

“My goal is by the time we start football, I’m good,” Richards said in January.

“Any time I ever doubted it?,” asked Richards on Tuesday. “No.”

Football’s started, and there he’s been, out at Howell High School — each day except for one because he needed to visit the doctor for treatment — coaching his defense backs, regardless of the heat, regardless of if the team has decided to hold practices at 6:30 a.m. or 6:30 p.m.

“He’s such an inspiration to all of us,” Howell head coach Aaron Metz said.

“Coach Richards is a great guy,” senior Joey Gossett added. “He inspires me so much. I’ve known him personally since freshman year, and he’s helped me become a better football player every single day. And I can’t thank him enough for that.”

Although his cancer has not yet been declared in remission, Richards said in July that, “things are going well, not out of the woods yet, but things are positive.” He said Tuesday that his most recent tests had shown no cancer in his hip, neck or head. The cancer remains present on his rib and there’s “a tiny spot” on his liver, but there had been no growth.

He’s also put on 25 pounds, going from weight 155 pounds during the most intense chemotherapy treatments to 180 now during his current once-a-week maintenance treatments. That was one of the things he was most happy about, as he’s gotten to shed the eggs and oatmeal diet, and proudly stated, “everything’s on the menu now.”

“For a while, I was pretty much eating everything in sight,” Richards said with a laugh. “I got a little bit of a belly now.”

Of course, no one can fault him for that.

No one could have faulted him for failing to show up during the hottest days of summer, either, when the sun was shining down on the players and coaches and the heat was so blistering that they elected to begin two-a-days at 6:30 a.m. to avoid the worst mid-afternoon hours.

Yet he showed up, each time.

“I thank God every day that he’s out there,” Metz said.

Not solely for his health, but also because Richards has one of the biggest roles to play his preseason. Howell lost all four of its starting defensive backs from a season ago, and as the defensive backs coach, it’s on Richards to figure out how to piece a new secondary together.

He believes that he’s found the team’s starting four in Gossett — who specifically requested to play defense as well as be the starting running back in the offseason — former starting linebacker Cameron Delk, Brandon Riffle and Michael Braurer, the former two of which will be the safeties and the latter two the cornerbacks.

“Defensive back-wise, two of the kids saw a little bit of time last year in the secondary, so they have some experience; Riffle and Gossett, both had a good summer and a good start of camp with two-a-days and everything like that,” Richards said. “We’ll probably start a sophomore up from the JV team (Brauer), a bigger kid that I had in basketball, so I know him pretty well. The other one is a kid at linebacker for us last year. … He was on loan for two years, because he was a sophomore the coaches came to me and said, ‘We don’t have anyone for jet.’ I said, ‘The only kid big enough and sturdy enough is Delk,’ so he played linebacker.”

It was clear that even with the tough task still ahead of him that he was excited to be talking football again rather than cancer. His players were excited to see that he’s in the process of recovering from the cancer, too. And they were equally as unsurprised about his participation at practice.

“I don’t think so,” said Gossett when asked if he was stunned to see Richards out there like he had never left, despite the things he had gone through, and still is going through. “He has the biggest heart in the world. He’ll do anything for us as kids on the team. He treats us like we’re his sons.”

For Richards that’s what his team essentially is, his family.

And his family — biological and team, minus his two oldest sons who are coming a week later — will be in attendance when Richards returns to the Howell football sideline on Friday night when Howell takes on Lansing Everett at Howell High School.

He hasn’t yet officially been declared a cancer survivor, but it’s still a moment that he’ll cherish.

“I told coach Metz way back before the season started, before we even started 7-on-7s, I go, ‘The kids run through the blowup helmet, and the coaches usually just walk inside and go through to the sideline,’ I said, ‘This year, I’m running through the helmet,’” Richards said, laughing. “I think I’ll be the only coach at Howell that’s ever run through it.”